Eric Ames's blog

I am a freshman in college.  I am not an economist.  My grades in economics classes are, in fact, good, but far from perfect.  It may seem presumptuous and downright insane to quibble with Alan Greenspan where economics are concerned, but I feel that something ought to be said when we start talking about the temporary nationalization of banks.  I may not know a massive amount about the economy, but as a student of history, I know that where government is concerned, very little is "temporary."

Ronald Reagan once famously said that a government bureau is the closest thing we will ever see to eternal life.  This idea is more or less the basis for my skepticism of supposedly "temporary" bank nationalization.  Mr. Greenspan may be right that temporary nationalization of financial institutions will be necessary to float the economy, but the struggle would be making that nationalization temporary.  It is almost axiomatic that government never gives up power willingly.  Once the government gets a new portfolio of responsibility, it does not like to let go of that power.  While state management, however revolting my principles may find it, may succeed in restructuring these institutions and putting them back in operation, there is no guarantee that the government would release them back to the open market in due course.  All instituions have internal goals in addition to their external ones, and government's instinctive internal goal is to keep as much under its oversight as it can manage.  The trouble with government institutions is that they can only downsize by government mandate.  Parastatal industries such as PEMEX in Mexico survive because of state support despite their prodigious inefficiency, and the last time I checked, Social Security hasn't gone out of business either.

As one generally inclined to small government and free markets, the idea of state management of private institutions wreaks a noxious socialist odor, but I am nowhere nearly as knowledgable as Mr. Greenspan is where economics are concerned, so as much as it may pain me to say so, he might be right about this.  If nationalization should occur, then it will take a truly dynamic and strong-willed leader like Margaret Thatcher to claw the fist of government away from the economcy, and I am still looking for that leader.

In the aftermath of the 2008 election, I noticed a great deal of argument within the Republican Party and the conservative mocement as to whom within our ranks we should hold responsible for our defeat.  Specifically, there has been an ongoing war of ideas between conservatives who emphasize economic issues, and conservatives who emphasize social issues, with many in the former category saying that conservatisim and Republicanism should shed their social and cultural ideas and stick to the economy, and those in the latter who insist upon the primacy of social matters.  I would say that we don't have to emphasize one at the expense of the other, but I feel I must says this: discard social values at your own peril.

Easily the most visible social issue of our time is that of abortion.  We are at a point in this nation where the Sarah Palins and Rick Santorums of the world are denigrated as backwards ignoramuses and neanderthals, as people unable to see the light of the progressive march of history towards its teleological whiggish conclusion.  This is criticism we are accustomed to from the left, who insist that abortion must be legal regardless of societal consequences.  The criticism they take from the right, however, the criticism that we need to deemphasize the abortion issue and focus on our anti-tax, pro-business agenda, is ill-advised.  This is because the notion of a Right to Life is the fundamental to basis of what conservatives believe in.

The idea of a Right to Life constitutes the very fabric of conservative ideology, the belief in the value of the individual.  The economic ideas generally associated with the conservative movement, low-taxes, limited government, and personal responsibility, are all based on the principle of individual rights.  The most basic and most seminal of these individual liberties is the liberty to Live.  As conservatives, we believe in the intrinsic and unique value of the life of every man, woman and child on God's green earth, and that they have liberties that can never be compimised.  If we as conservatives cannot respect this most basic and fundamental of individual liberties, then we have given ourselves no real reason to respect any others.

If the Republican Party wishes to return to the American political scene as a voice for conservative ideas, it cannot simply brush aside the abortion issue as some are willing to do.  Republicans should embrace this issue, not run away from it.  In some states, Republicans will have to carry minority votes, and there are strong contingents within immigrant communities, particularly those from Latin America and East Asia, that place a great importance on family values.  Furthermore, this is an issue that allows the party to reach out to the youth vote.  As a college student myself, I know that the pro-life movement has a very strong youth element to it.  If Republicans and conservatives don't want to abandon this generation to the wolves of rampant social democracy, then they need to reach out more to these groups, and bring them fully on board with the conservative movement.

Embracing social issues does not, however, mean that the Republicans must become the party of Mike Huckabee, a party whose sole appeal is to social conservatives, with perhaps some talk of tax-cutting thrown in.  We can stick to our economic conservative values, promote limited government, and stand on moral principles as well.  If we abandon one of our key principles, then we may as well abandon them all.

About 11 weeks ago, I reported from my independent research a case of potential corruption involving Barack Obama and patronage of the Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

Now, after he has been elected, we find that not only has Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich tried to sell a senate seat, but has tried to play dishonest political games with numerous organizations, including the Children’s Memorial Hospital.

I’m not going to say “I told you so” but it does look as though this hospital may be part of a serious political patronage machine.  This should perhaps not go ignored, and while it is presumptuous and hasty to say that Obama was involved in this scandal, it is hardly a good start for an administration dedicatede to eradicating the "same old politics as usual."

UPDATE:

ABC News reports some rather unflattering remarks from the Governor about the President elect.  The only thing this changes in my mind is that Blagojevich has gone from unprincipled to thoroughly unprincipled.  This definitely shows he really has no warm feelings for Obama, so we can probably assume that Obama wasn't involved.

 (promoted by Soren -- this is great independent research)

Once again, Obama uses taxpayer dollars to pay back key political allies

Senator Barack Obama is a prodigy when it comes to procuring federal funding.  Just ask the Crown family, who, in addition to being one of the most successful financial families in the country, are also high-profile and generous Obama campaign contributors. Since 2006, Barack Obama has provided earmarks for two groups in which the Crown family has a stake.  The first is General Dynamics, for which Barack Obama attempted to get an $8 million earmark. (Senator Obama was ultimately only able to procure $1.3 million of the amount requested) Lester and James Crown both sat on the board of directors at General Dynamics in 2005, Lester Crown having recently retired.

But Senator Obama’s ties to the Crowns run deeper than one corporate earmark.  Paula and Lester Crown are also both directors of the Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, an organization for which Senator Obama has requested a total of $7 million in earmarks since 2006.  The first was a request for $4 million in 2006 to fund the Children’s Memorial Medical Center’s Electronic Medical Record Project, and the second was a request for $3 million in 2008 to build an intensive care unit.  All told, one third of the directors at CMH, including the Crowns, have donated $95,124 to Barack Obama’s senate campaign, and $119,137 to his presidential campaign.  These include Director Vicki Heyman, who along with her husband is a prominent Democratic fundraiser and bundler for the Obama campaign.  In total, bundlers on the CMH board and their relatives, the Crowns included, have raised and pledged a total of at least $1.15 million for Obama for America.  To top it all off, James Crown and his wife Paula are both bundlers for the presidential campaign, and are members of his National Finance Committee.  James Crown was also on Barack Obama’s 2004 campaign finance committee, and is currently co-chair of his Illinois finance committee.

What is particularly damning about the Children’s Memorial Hospital earmark in particular is that the Obama campaign has openly referenced this earmark to deflect other allegations of corruption. When Obama was accused of accepting campaign contributions from lobbyists at the Illinois Primary Healthcare Association, his campaign pointed to the CMH earmark as a non-corrupt earmark.  

Apparently the candidate who was supposed to bring us to a post-partisan political paradise is willing to say or do anything to rescue his own career.